Difficult to read images from Scotland's People

[Tickettyboo]

Not by any means saying folk shouldn't ask for opinions in here. Even if the scan is clear, if the writing is stylised its often difficult to decipher and there are lots of rootschatters who will happily help.

 I'd REALLY recommend also asking (via the 'Report issue' button above the image on SP) if they can get a better scan for you .

Attached is a snippet of one I requested a re-scan for, along with a snip from the rescan which was emailed to me the next day.
As you can see its a vast improvement!

The rescan will replace the other one on the SP site not immediately -it may take a while but it will help others in the future.

Boo

[Pennines]

Thank you for this, Boo -- a great tip about asking for a re-scan.

As you say - an amazing difference.

[rosie17]

Agree that is a lot better 

Rosie

[dublin1850]

On my scanner, I get that bad quality result if I choose 'black and white image' instead of 'grayscale' in the settings.

[Tickettyboo]

On my scanner, I get that bad quality result if I choose 'black and white image' instead of 'grayscale' in the settings.

I checked the download of the original image (rather than the snip created on my mac in case that made a difference) and in the info about it, it says
Colour Space: RGB, Colour profile: sRGB IEC61966-2.1 - which at a guess means it was scanned in full colour

and the re-scan download says Colour space: Gray
so that would seem to have been scanned in grayscale

so that does seem to have been the cause of the problem and I've noted for my own stuff that grayscale may produce better scans for old docs rather than b/w or colour. Thanks dublin1850 :-)

Boo

[David Nicoll]

Hi,

   I think that probably the biggest difference is scan resolution.
   The originals were bulk scanned 20 plus years ago, camera densities have gone up a lot since then, and as an individual scan the operator may be tweaking things manually to get the best image.